The Epic Scope Of ‘The Last Airbender’
The Last Airbender is shaping up to be a film of epic proportions and is without doubt director M. Night Shyamalan’s most ambitious feature film undertaking yet.
The story follows the adventures of Aang (Noah Ringer), a ten year old ‘Airbender’ who has the ability to control wind. Aang is also the successor to a long line of Avatars – physical incarnations of the world itself who are capable of manipulating all four elements. Aang must put his childhood ways aside and battle to stop the Firebenders from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. As he does, he is pursued by the banished evil Prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko (Dev Patel), who plans to regain his lost honor by capturing the last Airbender.
The story is expected to unfold as a trilogy and is already being touted as Paramount’s answer to epic franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Sounds like a way out call but then the animated series it is based upon (Avatar: The Last Airbender) is supremely popular and the first teaser trailer certainly has “epic” stamped all over it.
Recently Tara Bennett over at VFXWorld spoke with producer Frank Marshall, production designer Philip Messina and director M. Night Shyamalan who each talked about the ambitious scope of the film.
“We are creating a completely fantastical, make-believe world,” Marshall said. “A couple of firsts on this film for Night: One is shooting all this greenscreen. He’s never really done much of that before…at all. He’s expanding his talent and range and that’s what I find exciting about it. He’s taking his filmmaking style and applying it to this fantasy world, which he hasn’t done before. And for me it’s been really exciting because I haven’t worked on a movie, that I can remember, that has a totally made up world. We get into a little bit of fantasy in Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, but they are still in the real world. But this is like our Star Wars. We get to have wild imaginative ideas. There are no limits. So the biggest challenge has really been creating this world and how we do it.”
“There are a lot of visual effects in this movie,” Messina adds. “We aren’t going to parts of Asia so we are relying on visual effects to complete that for us. But the mandate has been to build as much as possible and have the actors be on some sort of real environment and try to keep the greenscreen in the background. On stage it’s difficult to do that because you are always extending but as long as the actor’s feel there is some real environment around them, I think that’s where Night’s comfort zone is.”
Shyamalan agrees.
“I’m not the most techie guy in the world, so if I can keep coming from character, I can keep it grounded,” Shyamalan chuckles. “When we saw the cartoon, the mythology was so well thought out and had Buddhism, martial arts and CGI, but the kind that is character-based and that’s coming from emotions. So I could tell [Industrial Light and Magic]…and speak in terms of character point of view and be effective in that way.”
Read the full story at VFXWorld.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, watch it below:
The Last Airbender will be released in theaters:
USA – July 2, 2010
Australia – September 9, 2010
Visit M. Night Shyamalan’s Official Website
July 12th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Too bad his last few movies sucked! Now I avoid his films like the plague!
July 12th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
The trailer looks good. It’s a shame I won’t see the movie since the casting has been so…suspicious.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I’ll be one of the first at the cinema’s to see this. I actually liked The Happening and Unbreakable is so damn cool it’s ridiculous. Yeah I didn’t like The Village and Signs was so so, but considering Last Airbender is a lot different than any other movie he’s ever done I don’t expect it to be like any other movie he’s ever done.
For my two cents I think Airbender is going to be sick.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:56 am
I’m totally hanging for this show. I’m a complete sucker for any kind of kung fu type flick, even it’s it’s trash, I just can’t help myself. Compared to some of the Hong Kong movies I’ve seen, and loved, this looks like the highest budget movie of all time. Will definitely be watching.